Claim, a trick taking card game. Easy to learn, but difficult to master the tactics. Has many extensions.

Jekyll vs Hide, another trick taking card game. Twist is the players have different goals. Jekyll wants balance meaning both sides win equally, while Hide wants to win either none or all of them.

Otherwise I second Azul, Hanamikoji and 7 Wonders Duel that were mentioned already

I enjoyed it definetely and seems I learned a bit about the action order, when to upgrade which card etc, getting some bonus “chain reactions” etc. Probably still far away from playing optimal. I do see it a brighter light now

I also played another game of Ark Nova, after I got over last week. I was sure about my start hand and winning condition this time, could focus on learning to optimize the action economy.

We also brought out Indian Summer after a longer abscence, adding up on the autumn mood outside. A nice polyomino Rosenberg, but has a mean stealing interaction.

Watch out the monster cards have different directions. So not only interaction to one side.

To be fair I did some stupid mistakes, so not blaming the game here. Finding optimal strategy for various situations is usually something I enjoy

Played our 3rd game of Ark Nova, this time it took us “only” 3.5h with 2 players, omg.

Got difficult winning condition cards and starting hand. After the first 2 games had been pretty clear in terms of what to do, I struggled to find my way here. Lost with -7 to 26 or so.

Not sure if I would want to buy it (had it rented from the library), seems too luck based in terms of cards.

Plus there’s lot of 3rd party supplement stuff for CoS which aids in DMing

As a Player I didn’t like it as much as CoS but that might be personal taste. Our DM said there’s not much detail given sometimes and less external stuff to cover that fact.

Yes cool game! So much depth in just a standard card deck game. I don’t know any strategies, I was only ever trying to not run out of diamonds.

The app works well enough, used it on PC, I guess on phone it would be a lot harder to see everything and scrolling the map a lot. I find the icoography a bit small compared to the text, I have to see if the text size settings change icons as well.

At one point it mentioned a word I was thinking could be a keyword, but wasn’t highlighted as such, I didn’t find it in the rules in that moment. After the game I realized it was a specific status I got. Something to learn probably.

And it would be cool if flavor texts would be read out loud, not just the intro.

Played our first adventure in The Lord of the RIngs - Journeys in Middle Earth, 2 players: Legolas and Aragorn with the recommended roles. We chose the lowest difficulty “Adventure” and finished it succesfully, felt that “Normal” would’ve been doable also.

One more thing, although I never played it with more than 2 players total, I think Tom Vasel on Dicetower said the downtime with 3 and 4 is crazy long.

Have fun with your group and hopefully with your GF too!

I think since we have it we played it at least twice a month (even more so after we now got Legends too), so can’t really tell for longer breaks. I played Roll for the Galaxy, not Race, but had the same experience there you described about getting back easily after a longer break. I would imagine it similarly for Imperium, but guess thats also a personal thing.

I think it got easier for me over time, I guess thats just learning by heart.

For new players I’d recommend picking one of the easy rated civs (romans, macedonians) and stick to them for a number of games with side A civ card. Focus on really learning your cards and what they’re about, what ar the key words, what’s your civs card bonus (focus on it for your first games), then switch to the B side, only switch to higher rated civs if you really understand what’s the game about.

Yeah its not a casual game.

The first 3 are designed by Clemens Franz, A Feast for Odin was designed by Dennis Lohhausen. Dunno if that applies to the box design though, but clearly a different visual style.